Stress
👉 Understanding the patterns of an unstable sense of self, known as self-esteem dysregulation, is a key step towards personal growth and becoming our best selves.
In the last chapter, we talked about how everybody has a model of themselves as they currently are – their identity – and a model of themselves as they would ideally like to be – the ideal-self.
By understanding the difference between who we are and who we want to become, we can set goals appropriate for our current capabilities that help us work towards being a better version of ourselves.
This is, broadly speaking, what healthy functioning in the world looks like.
But in many cases 👋 this process goes wrong. This week we’re going to look at one of the most common ways that our identity breaks down and how that contributes to unstable (technical term: dysregulated) self-esteem.
This is a really critical topic for mental health: dysregulated self-esteem is a core problem that can drive depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, suicidality and self harm, mood swings, substance use, impulsive behaviors, attention issues, eating disorders and generally impaired functioning in the world.
And, of course it does – every mental health issue relates, in some way, to the self. An unstable sense of self therefore causes ripple effects across everything in our lives – and can often lead us to feel like we have loads of unrelated, intractable problems. We squash one, and another pops up.
Treating each problem without addressing the unstable self underlying it all is like putting pretty new curtains on a collapsing building. We must secure the foundation first.
🤔 Reflection of the Day:
You’re probably here because you want to improve something about your life. What are the specific problems or symptoms you want to improve?